


Festering

by ScreamingViking



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Final Fantasy VII
Genre: AU, Angst, Betrayal, Crossover, Family, Friendship, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, from a certain from of view, technically canon compliant
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-27
Updated: 2019-09-27
Packaged: 2020-10-29 06:40:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,560
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20792291
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ScreamingViking/pseuds/ScreamingViking
Summary: Sephiroth stumbles across a hut in a swamp.





	Festering

**Author's Note:**

> AKA Sephiroth meets his Grandma.

Sephiroth’s head was bleeding again.

The drips ran through his hair, trailing around his ears and down onto his face, along his brow and dripping off his nose. He could see it falling into the murky shallows, less than a foot from his face. His arms shook with exhaustion as he dragged himself forward. One arm, then the other, his jaw locked and all his attention on the repetition.

He had lost the use of his legs when something struck his back during the ambush. At the time it had hurt. The sensation had slowly faded away during the night and now he couldn't feel anything.

Possible paralysis. Hojo would be angry.

Had he only just gotten out of the labs to fail in the first month?

Lieutenant Welter had given their position away with his careless talking. It wasn’t Sephiroth’s fault, but the loss of the unit was his failure all the same. Welter had been the first to run away, before the grenades even started flying.

Sephiroth had dragged himself away from the ambush site after the fires grew out of control and the last of the unit fell. He must have misjudged his direction in the dark. Thick reeds and grainy mud stuck in his Second Class uniform and grated against his injuries. He had thought he was going north towards the foothills but the mud grew thinner and then he was dragging himself through shallow water. He had no idea where he was. 

Long slimy vines hung down from the canopy and brushed over him. Left arm, right arm. The waters smelled like old meat. The Wutai summer was hot and humid yet he shook with cold, the water agitated by his trembling. The throbbing in his head was making it hard to focus.

His eyes kept coming back to the red dripping off his face. His head injury must have reopened.

There was something he should be doing. Some preventative measure, or perhaps defensive. He couldn’t think what it was. He didn’t have his sword. He should have kept his sword. It was expensive equipment. Hojo would be very angry.

His left arm gave out under him and he got a mouthful of marsh water. He spat it back up and hauled himself forward on his right arm alone.

The blood fell like intermittent raindrops, the red curling away into the cloudy grey.

Oh. It dawned on him, Lieutenant Welter had given away their position on purpose. That was how he had known to run. He had betrayed them. 

The thought seeped into the haze of his mind, twisting and dissipating like blood in the marsh waters. His head felt very light.

His right arm gave out.

* * *

Consciousness returned to him slowly, grudgingly, rising on a tide of magical healing.

He didn’t open his eyes. He didn’t want to see the rectangle tiles of the Science Department’s ceiling. To be faced with Hojo’s beady eyes and disappointment, and the reality that he’d likely not be allowed back outside again.

Sensation tingled back into his legs. The cure spell was working faster than normal, they must have hired a more adept assistant to do the medical casting on this floor. The last one took forever and his spells felt halfhearted. This new one was neither.

Would they confine him to his quarters again?

The smell of ash and rot tickled his nose.

He opened his eyes, confused.

Yellow eyes set deep in a hard, wrinkled face looked down at him intently. Curls of glowing magic threw harsh shadows and lit the mist swirling behind and around the spectre. The yellow eyes glowed.

He froze. It had to be a hallucinating. The bizarre sight studied him with a curious, intrigued look. A hand cradled the back of his head, the source of the magic pouring through him. Everything felt so visceral, so relentlessly present. The light scratch of metal armoured fingers against his scalp, the prick of grass through the tears in his uniform, the tugging on his hair where he was laying on it. The tightness of mud dried on his face. The _presence_ to the magic scouring out his insides. He wasn’t hallucinating.

Then the creature pulled back and it was just an old woman. She stood and left him lying in the dirt.

He sat up and looked around, trying to orient himself. His head swam with the sudden movement. He was still in the swamp, hauled up onto the banks of a small island.

He felt silly for being so unnerved by some elderly civilian woman. Not even Wutaian. He watched her walk up a tiny mound above the swamp waters to a small shack on the highest ground. She was thin and pallid, wearing humble clothes with dull white hair that sat in loose, ratty locks on her shoulders. The old lady made herself comfortable at a fire pit in front of the door.

Thick mists hung over the murky water in every direction, drowning out hazy silhouettes of distant trees and other islands. Clothes trembling in a weak wind on a washing line was the only movement. He rubbed at his eyes. He was still sweating, despite the cold.

“What are you doing in the DMZ?” he asked. That had to be where he was.

“What are you doing on my island?” the old woman replied, her head cocked like a raptor.

He frowned. “This is controlled territory.”

“Yes,” she drawled. “It is.”

He didn’t know what to make of that. The only civilians he had ever spoken to before were lab techs and high ranking Shinra employees: those conversations did not provide much context for this. He pulled himself to his feet, feeling the retreat of a tingling sensation all the way down to his toes. His back injury still stung with the movement.

“Has the army come through this way?” he asked.

“No. You are far from your company, child.”

“Who are you?”

“Some call me Flemeth. What do they call you?”

He frowned. It had only been a month but the enemy already hissed and screamed his name when he took to the field. He didn’t like the way she was looking at him, sunken eyes thoughtful under a heavy brow. Curious, cold, and slightly amused. It reminded him of Hojo.

“You already know who I am,” he said, crossing his arms.

“But I am asking.” Flemeth stood and he was shocked at how tall she was. He was tall for twelve and she towered over him, more than General Heidegger did. “A small price to pay for use of your legs, no?”

He took a step back, feeling his head swim again. She had cured his spine but not his fever.

He didn’t give his name.

She took grey and fraying strips of bandages down from the washing line, watching him patiently.

“What do you want?” he asked, finally.

She shrugged and handed him the neatly folded stack. “Insurance.”

“What?”

“You were in the waters for some time before I fished you out,” she said. “Dress your wounds, before they fester.”

“You could just give me your cure materia and I'll fix it properly.”

“Oh, I could, could I?” she replied, her eyebrow arched.

She turned away from him, her attention shifting to the blackened kettle hanging over the fire pit.

He looked to the stagnant waters and reached back to feel at the injury at his back. It was weeping clear fluid. He set his jaw, sat on one of the logs, and started unfolding the bandages.

The angle was awkward and his arms still trembled. He didn’t ask for help and she didn’t offer.

By the time he was done his abdomen was a mass of securely anchored bandages and he was sweating through them and shaking hard enough to compromise his balance. 

Flemeth silently handed him a tin cup poured from the kettle. Sediment swam in the murky tea and it smelled bitter and vaguely medicinal. He considered the contents with raised eyebrows and pursed lips. Hojo would likely scream at the sight of it.

“You intend to die of your fever and waste my efforts?” she asked. “Then by all means. Go without.”

He kept eye contact and downed the whole thing. It was foul. He kept his expression placid, not giving so much as a wince or shiver at the horrific taste. He could take much worse than this.

She threw her head back and laughed.

The light dimmed as the night drew near.

Flemeth went about her business, disappearing into the hut. He sat on a log by the fire and waited out his fever in silence.

As the light died she returned and fed him a soup of root vegetables and eel. The wall of mist never broke but he saw silhouettes and bobbing green lights wandering through it. He thought, in his fever addled mind, that they weren’t people, whatever they were. None drew near to the island and old woman looked unconcerned, hunched over her fire.

“Why did you help me?” he asked after hours of silence. His voice came out shaky and thin.

“A lost child washes up on my shores,” she replied quietly, “what else am I to do?”

He scowled. “I’m not a child.” He couldn’t say he wasn’t lost.

Aged yellow eyes looked at him pityingly from over the fire.

He looked away, feeling small and ignorant. A distant light bobbed off in the darkness. He clenched his hand, wishing for his sword.

“Is it safe?” he asked.

“Is anything?”

“Just give a straight answer!” he demanded.

“Such an angry child.” The flickering of the fire highlighted the craggy topography of her face, the shadows at her back. “Waiting to grow into an angry man.”

He shrunk back into himself. Sucked in a breath and let a numbing calmness take over. Emotional outbursts were unacceptable.

“I’m not angry.”

She snorted.

“How did you come to be on my island?”

He sat again. A log cracked in the fire. He watched the flames lick along the wood, greedy, burning the dried streaks of sap.

“I was betrayed. A deserter gave our positions away when we were in an exposed location. I have to get back to report on it.”

“Did your deserter survive?”

“_I_ survived.” He stared into the fire and held tight onto the empty tin cup. “I don’t care about him.”

Lieutenant Welter had been… nice. The others in the unit either patronised him or they sneered and tried to sabotage him. He glowered into the flames.

“Your fever will break in the night,” Flemeth said.

“Yes.”

“Then you can leave at dawn.”

She told him to sleep in the hut, where there were two thin beds pushed up against opposite walls. He didn’t think he would get any sleep either in the hut or opposite from the strange woman, but he drifted off as soon as he laid down.

He had quiet, empty dreams that night, none of the needles and slaughter he was accustomed to. He blinked awake once, hearing the flap of leathery wings. The hut was empty and he dismissed it as a dream.

His fever passed in the night. When he got up there was no sign of Flemeth anywhere. The air hung still and heavy with mist, like the island was insulted from the rest of the world.

His wounds had all healed into itching new tissue. He stretched, drank the last of the foul concoction left in the kettle, and set out across the marsh.

* * *

It took him two days to find a Shinra convoy and return to a base.

He reported on the ambush and his subsequent loss of the unit. He left out the old hag on her island. The further he got from the swamp the less real it all felt. By the time he was standing in a fresh uniform in front of a grizzled major he was convinced it had been a fever dream. There wasn’t even a swamp near the DMZ.

He received orders to bring in Welter, alive. So he did, bringing down an enemy fortress alone.

He returned to Midgar every other month for his Mako shots and Hojo’s scrutiny. The war continued, the tentative peace talks collapsing and borders shuffling. Sephiroth’s name was whispered with increasing reverence and fear on both sides of the conflict. 

The second time he stumbled upon the hut, it was again someone else’s fault.

Either high command had gotten the location wrong for the ordinance drop or they didn’t care that he was still on the ground.

He dragged himself away from the upturned fields of dirt and bodies, using a broken spear as a crutch. His right knee was a mangled mess that sent a bone deep twisting sensation through him with every limping step.

Mist rolled down from the mountains as the night drew to an end and stagnant water splashed under his boots.

He wasn’t anywhere near the DMZ.

He collapsed onto the shores of a small island. Flemeth sat under a canvas awning, scraping reptile hides clean for curing in the grey predawn light.

“Welcome back,” she said, looking him up and down with an amused smile.

He cast esuna on himself. The scenery remained in place. The old woman chortled, her filthy white hair shaking with the movement.

“Flemeth,” he greeted. He hauled himself up to the fire pit and sat with no grace on the log.

He positioned his leg out in front of him with his hands, finally facing the mess. Would whoever gave the order receive any punishment if he sustained permanent damage? Unlikely. The pilot might get demoted if Heidegger felt particularly embarrassed over it.

He tapped into his cure materia and felt out the damage. The smashed bone and cartilage were all misaligned. If he tried to heal it now then he would never walk properly again. He locked his jaw. If he didn’t heal it then he might not make it back at all.

Maybe Hojo would be able to reverse the damage of healing over shattered bone. Or perhaps he’d amputate it and give him a prosthetic leg.

Flemeth reached out a hand.

Magic bloomed inside the joint and he felt the bones rearrange themselves. The pain rushed back, a merciless relief. He stared at her, the tendrils of silver and blood coloured magic glowing in the air around his leg. There was no materia glow anywhere on her clothes or equipment.

He stared at her. 

“You’ll want to splint that,” she said.

He wanted to say it was impossible. That she was even here, that she could exist in this space three miles from heavily contested territory was impossible.

“Are you a summon spirit?” he asked. It was the only explanation he could think of.

She grinned. “Perhaps you should try summoning me and find out.”

Still tapped into his cure materia, he felt the spell fixing his leg retreat. There was a complexity to the magic beyond anything he’d seen in the materia department. Beyond even what the old Wutaian masters threw at him in battle.

She was not bound to anyone’s call. He hadn’t asked after her allegiance the first time and he understood why now. It was ridiculous to even consider her caring about a human territory dispute let alone being beholden to one.

“Did you catch your traitor?” she asked.

He nodded after a moment. She must have been asking about Welter.

She dragged her knife up the stretched snakeskin, scraping off fat and tissue. “What happened to him?”

“I don’t know. They took him away.” He shrugged. “He was probably executed.”

“A greater kindness than he deserved.” The knife caught on a knot of fat.

He looked away. “He faced Shinra’s justice.”

She didn’t reply. He stood, testing his leg. He _would_ need to splint it, but his eyelids felt heavy. The battle had raged for days before the bombs ended it, and he’s been on the front lines the entire time. Hopefully some of the others had survived too. 

He looked to the hut.

“Why do you have two beds?” he asked. “Is there someone else here?”

Flemeth didn’t look away from her work. “No.”

“Who’s is the other bed?”

She cut the skin down from the frame and tied up the next one. Nimble fingers worked with strength at odds with the wrinkles and spots.

“It was my daughter’s.”

“Did she die in the war?”

She scoffed. “She is finding her way in the world, as all her sisters did.” She sent him a look around the framework of sticks and string. “As all children must, whether their parents wish it or not.”

“I wouldn't know,” he said, unsure of the ground the conversation stood on. But he wanted to ask. She picked up her knife and the scraping began anew.

“How many children do you have?” he asked tentatively.

“Many.”

There was something there. In the way her eyes sharpened, her hand shifted its grip on the knife. The scraping continued, never fumbling, hesitating, or cutting through the scales. He thought that she was angry. And not especially trying to hide it either, she was simply… storing it away. Sharpening it, perhaps.

“What... happened?”

“I was betrayed, child,” she said, her expression grim and grey in the diffuse light. “by those who should have stood by my side.”

“What did they do?”

A bitter smile pulled at her lips. “They killed me.”

Angry was insufficient. Furious was insufficient. The depths of her cold, carefully damned up rage stunned him.

“Did they... face justice for it?” he asked, unsure what to make of the nonsensical answer or the emotion that accompanied it. 

“Justice?” She barked laughed, and then stopped. Her tone turned to something quiet. “No. There was no justice. Not yet.” She flipped the knife in her hand and scrapped in the opposite direction. “And you, who did this to you? Why are you angry?”

He blinked. “I’m not angry.”

She laughed again.

* * *

It was always quiet at the hut.

His unplanned visits continued sporadically over the years. The war raged on and he grew older, better at compartmentalising the parts of his life best not examined too closely.

The misty swamp never made more sense or found any rational way to fit in with the rest of his Shinra-dictated life. He learned the mechanisms of interacting with it, and accepted the resource for what it was. Flemeth would heal him if he arrived in need of it, provide him shelter, and then tell him to leave. If he had the strength to do it himself she wouldn’t even heal him. 

She wasn’t an affectionate woman, but he thought she might have cared for him. Without pity or patience, but she never turned him away. He didn’t trust her, and he doubted she trusted him, but she was reliable. 

He considered her boundless magic and its disregard for the rules he was taught. He replicated it. Genesis was furious at him for it and just as furiously tried to cast without materia too.

Hojo had asked where he learned to do such a thing. He did not answer.

He trudged up the slope once more. Defectors were to blame this time, his own man turned on him and plunged a sword into his back. He had suspected the traitor to have been a Wutai spy for some time and had been careful about what information he passed along. This was the most annoying way to be proved right.

He’d have to remove the sword eventually, but for now, he held the snapped off blade protruding through his abdomen to stop it sliding around. His body was steadily healing around it and any filth on the metal. It was going to be a pain to pull back out.

He sighed. He’d killed the traitor immediately because the situation demanded it. Who knew how long it would take to uncover the next spy inevitably planted in his ranks, or which deep cover operative they activated? What a waste.

There was no sign of Flemeth on the island. The mists revealed nothing, and a heavy silence lingered around the hut.

A familiar black kettle hung over the cold fire pit. He sniffed its contents and discovered the bitter herbal concoction that she typically offered. It was some kind of health potion but it’s reach extended to things like infection and fever and virus that went untreated by Shinra made remedies.

He used a fire spell to restart the fire and set the brew heating again.

The sword was, in fact, a pain to pull back out. He managed and leaned it up against the wall. Who knew what Flemeth would make of it, she could keep it or throw it away as pleased her.

She never did ask for anything of him, after that first day. He never told her his name either. He wondered if she knew anyway.

After he had finished the truly disgusting tea and felt all the poisons burn out of his body, he sat on the bed in the hut and pulled his boots off. There was no need to stay on guard, there would be no attacks while he was here, nothing would breach the misty perimeter. He had been at the front too long to take that for granted.

He lay on his side, fully intending to get twelve hours of sleep. 

The second bed caught his eye, as it always did, and he thought of the daughter who never came home.

What had become of her? Had she simply left, disappearing into the mists? Perhaps she grew tired of Flemeth’s mercurial cynicism and left her for company she preferred.

The rage and bitterness that haunted Flemeth never left or dimmed, she just hid it better some days. It was so strong he thought it would probably consume smaller wrongs and add them to its depths.

The daughter was probably dead, by treachery or otherwise. It had been too long and there was danger through the mists. More than once he had seen the silhouette of a dragon overhead and heard the growl of hungry monsters amidst the trees.

Maybe the daughter was the traitor, he thought, as he drifted off to sleep.

* * *

He didn’t remember how he made it to the hut the next time.

He only remembered the dread, holding his internal organs in, feeling his lifeblood ooze out over his hands.

Betrayed, again. Had Angeal and Genesis survived? Had anyone?

On her knees in the mud, Flemeth held his head in her lap and knitted him back together.

He looked up, his vision flickering in and out and saw an old woman with horns bound in red stretching behind her head, pearly white hair floating on the tide of magic. Golden eyes glowed bright and beautiful with power. A sickle moon hung high overhead and something roared like the ocean. His vision blurred. Multiple wings stretched out around them, thick scaled hide and soft black feathers. Something inside of him ached at the sight.

The magic pulsed stronger through him. He couldn’t comprehend any of it.

She cradled his head, cold fury in her eyes. “What have you done, child?” she murmured.

He wasn’t afraid. He felt safe in the eye of her storm.

He reached a hand up, or tried to. His vision blacked out entirely.

“My name is Sephiroth,” he forced out.

"I know, child." She brushed his hair out of his face, and saved his life.

* * *

He woke in the morning to the sight of an irate old woman peeling a stack of root vegetables on the other side of the open door.

He slowly pushed himself up and took stock. The grain of the sack bedding had pressed into his side and face. His injuries were nothing more than pale lines on his chest and abdomen. There was no ache or lingering weakness. Unusual.

He looked around for his coat and found it hanging over the door, the slices in it flapping in a breeze.

“Do you intend to sleep through the day?” Flemeth called.

He rose, reclaiming his coat and watching her through narrowed eyes. She had hauled him up the slope, into the hut, and onto the bed. He found it stranger that she had bothered than she had been capable of it.

“What am I to you?” he asked, looking down at where she sat. Jaundiced eyes looked up from under a head of dirty grey hair.

“Wearing on my patience and my generosity. There’s good firewood on the fallen tree behind the hut.” She pointed with her paring knife. “And my stores are getting low.”

He frowned at the non-answer and left her to her dubious parsnips. 

* * *

Genesis abandoned him. Angeal did too. They betrayed Shinra and Shinra asked him to hunt them down and kill them for it.

He didn’t want to.

He made a Second Class do it instead.

He went zolom hunting. The giant serpent carved through the sunny swamp’s waters, its wake crashing over what small patches of dirt broke the surface. There were no trees here or jagged little hills, just reeds and water and the mountains in the distance.

He cut down the beast with little trouble and wished it had landed more of a hit on him. The scratch on his arm would heal again within minutes.

He didn’t want to be here, under the clear blue sky, he wanted to sit on that little island, encased in its wall of mist. To look up into a monster’s yellow eyes and feel like… he didn’t know what. Like he was safe despite all evidence to the contrary? Like he was exceptional in a good way, for once. Like someone had his back and wasn’t going to turn around and promptly stab it.

He sheathed his sword and trekked further into the marshlands. The sun drifted lower in the sky then sunk below the horizon. He killed another zolom before the sun rose again.

There was no mist. He found no islands. He was alone.

That felt like a betrayal too. Quieter, not so dramatic as Genesis’ impassioned speeches or as burdensome as Angeal’s honour or any of the others who had turned on him over the years. Just the painful realisation that Flemeth could not be relied upon. Nobody could be.

He walked back to Midgar.

By the time he got back, Genesis and Angeal had been reclassified as KIA.

* * *

The next time he stumbled across the hut it took him by surprise. He wasn’t even injured.

Genesis’ clones attacked in the streets of Midgar and he hunted them down. He wasn’t trying especially hard: he didn’t need to, they weren’t challenging opponents.

The degrading clones were strange and monstrous abominations, but with a strangeness that struck him as familiar. It was only strange for being here, in the clean streets of Shinra's capital. It was poorly done too. It was an odd thought, but he knew, intrinsically, that it was amateur work. Barely scratching the surface of what could truly be done if you wanted to play with the limitations of humanity.

The thought of the snapping of mighty wings over Midgar amused him for a grim moment.

He cut the things down, and it wasn’t amusing anymore, it was distasteful. Just poorly executed genetic engineering, one more rogue specimen to be unceremoniously put down.

He turned a corner to see if they had gotten into the city drainage system, sword held at the ready, and a wall of mist enveloped him.

A slimy vine draped over his shoulder. He looked up to a hut on a small isolated island.

Flemeth stood in full regalia, looking out into the grey distance. Bold and towering in her horns and sharp-edged plate and studded leather armour. Thick white hair cascaded down her back between her horns. She was still old, if anything she looked older, but she wasn’t hiding her strength anymore. She cast a dragon's shadow. It looked right.

She never had been human. Why pretend otherwise?

He climbed the slope. 

Something clenched inside him to be standing at her side with her unveiled at last. An indescribable yearning still choked him, but he knew better than to trust it. She wasn’t on his side. She had never pretended otherwise, he simply drew the wrong conclusions. She couldn’t be trusted any more than anyone else.

Hulking silhouettes in the mist drew nearer. A battle raged, for the first time shouts and screams pierced the blanket of quiet that shrouded the hut. Soon the perimeter would be breached.

Flemeth watched, her chin tilted up with satisfaction. He stood tall at her side and watched the masses draw nearer, slaughtering each other.

“You do your mother proud, Sephiroth,” Flemeth said, at last, quietly.

His brow furrowed. “Jenova? What do you know of her?”

She smiled. “Is that what they called her?”

“What am I to you?” he asked.

She looked at him with molten gold eyes and a banked up rage he couldn’t fathom. He was starting to though.

“Insurance.”

The battle broke through wall of mist. He stepped forward, and his foot landed on a cobbled Midgar street.

A monstrous clone jumped out of the shadows. He cut it down with a single strike.

* * *

At Nibelheim he realised he had been angry after all.

There was a deep, cold well of anger inside of him, filled to the brim.

He found his mother in a glass tank, white hair floating in the Mako solution and sticking to the inside of the glass. A single purple eye burned in her rotting head. He could hear her in his head, promising so many lovely things.

To always be with him. To heal him and get him his vengeance. She whispered of what they could achieve together and how. The strength they would have if he let her in. He wanted it all. She would never leave, never betray him as everyone else had. He would ensure it.

He took her head from her dead body, cradling it gently. Yes. They would be stronger together. He could hear her screaming as he took her sentience and drowned it in his own. She struggled but he reassured her, unmoved. He was with her now, and would never be alone again.

Her essence dissolved within him, like blood disappearing into water.

He was ready to unfurl his wings.

* * *

Tifa raised her eyebrows at what they’d stumbled across in their final trek back into the heart of the Northern Crater.

How could there be a hut here? Why was the water at its base still liquid, when even their last health potion had frozen solid in its vial? It was surrounded by rubble and rotting plant life, but the structure itself looked untouched.

Cloud had no such hesitations and marched in through the door. She and the others followed him in to help ransack the place.

Bandages and a row of still-liquid health potions sat on the table like they were just waiting for them to come along and collect them. The potions were an odd colour, but Nanaki recognized some of the ingredients by smell and said they were good.

They took everything. Tifa felt bad. Someone was obviously living here, and they were taking all their provisions.

But the world would end if they didn’t defeat Sephiroth. They could apologise for the theft later, they all needed to live that long first. She tucked a health potion into her belt. Just in case. Insurance.

* * *

Sephiroth fell back into the Lifestream, defeated.

He wasn’t torn apart by the tide, no matter what the flower girl tried, but he was trapped within it.

In time, he washed up on the shores of a little island. There was a hut and a dead goddess of Justice and Vengeance sitting by the fire.

He rose from the current.

Flemeth looked up at him with calm, golden eyes.

He stood before the fire, observing her: the reality of what she was. Even her horned and armoured physical form couldn’t grasp it, the true might of Mythal’s spirit reforged within a human body and burning like a furnace. The strength of the walls she had spent years fortifying between him and her burned just as bright. She had always known, and placed herself well beyond his reach. 

He sat down on the log opposite her. 

He let out a breath. He felt betrayed. He should have been used to it by now.

“How is my daughter, child?” she asked.

“She is with me,” he said, his hand straying to his heart.

“Did she struggle?”

He met her eyes. “Yes.”

She smiled, vicious and self-righteous. “Good.”

“Did you get your vengeance?” he asked, just as vicious.

“Yes,” she said. “Did you?”

He looked away, into the green sea that surrounded them. Soft and gentle and begging him to trust it. To relax and fade away. “It’s not enough.”

“No. It rarely is.” She leaned back, the shadow of a throne long gone supporting her. A wall more solid than anything else in the green landscape surrounded her, keeping the gentle current at bay.

“Tend to your wounds, Sephiroth. Lest they fester.”


End file.
